1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a production system that produces desired products by executing manufacturing work with a predetermined production sequences and to a manufacturing equipment selecting method in such production system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
FIG. 1 shows a conventional production system, wherein products before manufacturing P1 are sent to transfer line 1, manufactured with manufacturing equipment 2 and 3, and P2 and P3 are the final products. The same final products may be manufactured in such a manner in large quantities. Controllers 4 and 5 control manufacturing equipment 2 and 3, respectively. In the FIG. 1 production system, final products are manufactured by moving the raw products on a production line according to a procedure determined in advance. The processing programs and data are stored in each of the manufacturing equipment and specified processing is carried out by such equipment. For this reason, the production system shown in FIG. 1 is suitable when the same processing is repeated for many products, such as for the mass production of small products.
However, disavantageously, the FIG. 1 system has various problems, such as: (1) controllers 4 and 5 use specific control programs. Thus, when the process is to be changed or different processing needs to be executed for each product, all of the control programs must be changed. Accordingly, it is difficult to change manufacturing processes in a flexible manner. Moreover, because of this lack of flexibility, it is difficult to handle small scale production of multiple products. (2) addition of new manufacturing equipment or deletion of existing manufacturing equipment is not easy. and (3) when some of the manufacturing equipment fail, the manufacturing work cannot be readily executed using another manufacturing equipment having the same function.
Accordingly, an object of the invention is to overcome the aforementioned and other disadvantages, deficiencies and problems of the prior art.
Another object is to provide a production system and a manufacturing equipment selecting method for such production system that can flexibly achieve small scale production of multiple products, handle addition and/or deletion of various manufacturing equipment, and handle failures in the manufacturing equipment.